Taliban Accused of Brutal Killing of Woman

Locals vow revenge for Afghan woman's execution

By Hamid Shalizi | Reuters – 2 hrs 54 mins ago

CHARIKAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Sayed Jalal furrowed his eyebrows in anger as he vowed to avenge the public execution of a woman in front of a large crowd not far from Kabul, brazen violence that spurred shock and sharp condemnation from Afghan authorities and the United States.

The Taliban denied involvement in the killing in Parwan province, in which an unnamed woman's head and body were riddled with bullets at close range in punishment for alleged adultery.

Authorities in Kabul directly blamed the Islamist group.  "We will take revenge for this. Their brutality and such inhumane acts are why we hate the Taliban," said the 42-year-old shopkeeper in Charikar, provincial capital of Parwan about 25 km (15 miles) south of Shinwari, where the killing took place.

The execution was recorded in a three-minute video, obtained by Reuters, which shows a woman in a shawl being repeatedly shot in front of around 150 men perched on a hill, who cheer and praise the attackers, calling them "mujahideen", a term the Taliban call themselves.

NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. General John Allen, called the killing "an atrocity of unspeakable cruelty".

Others in Charikar, from where a dirt road leads to Shinwari through rough terrain, lamented what they described as the Taliban's increasing sway over their once relatively peaceful area, about an hour's drive west from Kabul.

"The Taliban are creating fear and trying to rule us through terrorism but they will never succeed," said Charikar resident Najibullah, 30, prompting approving nods from a crowd of men who had formed around him in a busy outdoor market.

The Taliban dismissed the claims: "We have no operational update about this," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. Parwan's governor Basir Salangi said the Taliban carried out the killing in his province eight days ago.

Despite the presence of over 130,000 foreign troops and 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, the Taliban have managed to resurge beyond their traditional bastions of the south and east, extending their reach into once more peaceful areas like Parwan.

"This was a brutal act against the Afghan people by the Taliban," Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said.

"They will be punished as they were punished 10 years ago and we will continue our struggle to eliminate them," he told Reuters, referring to their ousting from power in late 2001 by U.S.-backed Afghan forces after an austere five-year rule.

The condemnation came on the day of a major donors' summit in Tokyo, where $16 billion in development aid was pledged for Afghanistan over the next four years as they try to prevent it from sliding back into chaos once most foreign troops have left by the end of 2014.

In a declaration by summit participants, the importance of promoting women's rights was stressed repeatedly.

The U.S. embassy in Kabul, condemning the public execution in the "strongest possible terms", said the hard-won gains of Afghan women made in the last 10 years must be protected.

But Shah Jahan Yazdanparast, head of women's affairs in Parwan, which is connected to the Kabul ministry, said such naked violence as the woman's execution "will only increase our fear and concern as women in Afghanistan".

Afghan women have won back basic rights in education, voting and work since the Taliban were ousted from power but fears are mounting both at home and abroad that such freedoms could be traded away as Kabul seeks peace talks with the group.

"Afghan women and girls were looking to the international community to protect the progress they have made in the last decade and they have been let down," Oxfam Afghanistan's head of policy and advocacy, Louise Hancock, said on Sunday after the close of the Tokyo summit.

Violence against women has increased sharply in the past year, according to Afghanistan's independent human rights commission. Activists say there is waning interest in women's rights on the part of President Hamid Karzai's government.

Authorities blamed the Taliban for the stoning to death of a young couple in northern Kunduz province two years ago in a crowded bazaar, days after a pregnant widow was flogged and killed in western Baghdis province. The Taliban denied involvement.

(Additional reporting and writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

More on Imprisoned Afghan Rape Victim

What punishment did the rapist receive for committing "adultery?"  Is the rapist's family shamed in the eyes of society?

Report from CNN.com:

Karzai: Freed rape victim has choice to marry attacker

By the CNN Wire Staff

updated 6:36 AM EST, Sat December 17, 2011

Kabul (CNN) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that a rape victim freed from prison after he intervened on her behalf has the right to make her own choice about whether to marry her attacker.
In an exclusive interview from Kabul, Karzai told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that the woman's case appeared to be a "misjudgment" that had to be resolved.

The woman, identified only as Gulnaz for her own protection, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after she reported that her cousin's husband had raped her.


But the 21-year-old was freed this week following the president's intervention, and is now staying at a women's shelter in Kabul, with the daughter she conceived in the attack and gave birth to in prison.

Her plight attracted international attention when it came out that she had agreed to marry her attacker to gain her freedom and legitimize her daughter. 

Karzai said he had convened a judicial meeting when he came aware of her case. "The issue was discussed in detail, and the right inquiries made. We, on advice from the chief justice and the minister of justice, decided that this was a case, perhaps, of misjudgment and that it has to be resolved, and resolved by giving her a pardon immediately. That's what I did."

Asked whether it was appropriate that Gulnaz should marry her attacker, as some in Afghanistan say, Karzai said it was her choice. "It's up to her to decide who to marry or who not to marry," he said. "And Islam gives her that right."
Looking to the future, Karzai said the West should have confidence in Afghanistan's judicial processes after international forces withdraw. "It's a country that has been troubled a lot. But it is also an old country, with laws and a penal code and judicial history," he said.
"I can assure you that, once the international forces are withdrawn and not as many as there are today, Afghanistan will neither go into a trouble within the country or strife or into miscarriage of justice. I can assure you of that."
After the attack two years ago, Gulnaz hid what happened as long as she could because she was afraid of reprisals. But then she began showing signs of pregnancy and, aged only 19, was found guilty by the courts of sex outside of marriage -- adultery -- and sentenced to 12 years in jail.
A key problem is that Afghan law fails to clearly distinguish between rape and adultery, which is a crime under Sharia, or Islamic law.
And despite the pardon, Gulnaz's future remains unclear in a conservative society where her ordeal is considered to have brought shame on her family. She told CNN from prison last month that she was willing to marry her attacker in order to end her incarceration, though she did not want that option.

I Thank The Goddess Daily...

that I was born in the USA and raised by tough (strict) but loving parents who taught me from Day One, back before so-called "Women's Lib," that a female was as good as any male and sometimes a hell of a lot better.  Sadly, a majority of women in the world are no so blessed.

Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death
March 29, 2011|By Farid Ahmed and Moni Basu, CNN

Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN) -- Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70.

Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.

Amazingly, an initial autopsy report cited no injuries and deemed her death a suicide. Hena's family insisted her body be exhumed. They wanted the world to know what really happened to their daughter.

Sharia: illegal but still practiced

Hena's family hailed from rural Shariatpur, crisscrossed by murky rivers that lend waters to rice paddies and lush vegetable fields.

Hena was the youngest of five children born to Darbesh Khan, a day laborer, and his wife, Aklima Begum. They shared a hut made from corrugated tin and decaying wood and led a simple life that was suddenly marred a year ago with the return of Hena's cousin Mahbub Khan.

Mahbub Khan came back to Shariatpur from a stint working in Malaysia. His son was Hena's age and the two were in seventh grade together.

Khan eyed Hena and began harassing her on her way to school and back, said Hena's father. He complained to the elders who run the village about his nephew, three times Hena's age.

The elders admonished Mahbub Khan and ordered him to pay $1,000 in fines to Hena's family. But Mahbub was Darbesh's older brother's son and Darbesh was asked to let the matter fade.

Many months later on a winter night, as Hena's sister Alya told it, Hena was walking from her room to an outdoor toilet when Mahbub Khan gagged her with cloth, forced her behind nearby shrubbery and beat and raped her.

Hena struggled to escape, Alya told CNN. Mahbub Khan's wife heard Hena's muffled screams and when she found Hena with her husband, she dragged the teenage girl back to her hut, beat her and trampled her on the floor.

The next day, the village elders met to discuss the case at Mahbub Khan's house, Alya said. The imam pronounced his fatwa. Khan and Hena were found guilty of an illicit relationship. Her punishment under sharia or Islamic law was 101 lashes; his 201.

Mahbub Khan managed to escape after the first few lashes. [Escaped?  What does that mean?  So the dudes who were wielding the whips didn't chase after him, hunt him down and finish their punishment?  Yeah, Islamic Justice.]

Darbesh Khan and Aklima Begum had no choice but to mind the imam's order. They watched as the whip broke the skin of their youngest child and she fell unconscious to the ground.

"What happened to Hena is unfortunate and we all have to be ashamed that we couldn't save her life," said Sultana Kamal, who heads the rights organization Ain o Shalish Kendro.

Bangladesh is considered a democratic and moderate Muslim country, and national law forbids the practice of sharia. But activist and journalist Shoaib Choudhury, who documents such cases, said sharia is still very much in use in villages and towns aided by the lack of education and strong judicial systems.

The Supreme Court also outlawed fatwas a decade ago, but human rights monitors have documented more than 500 cases of women in those 10 years who were punished through a religious ruling. And few who have issued such rulings have been charged.

Last month, the court asked the government to explain what it had done to stop extrajudicial penalty based on fatwa. It ordered the dissemination of information to all mosques and madrassas, or religious schools, that sharia is illegal in Bangladesh.

"The government needs to enact a specific law to deal with such perpetrators responsible for extrajudicial penalty in the name of Islam," Kamal told CNN.

The United Nations estimates that almost half of Bangladeshi women suffer from domestic violence and many also commonly endure rape, beatings, acid attacks and even death because of the country's entrenched patriarchal system.

Hena might have quietly become another one of those statistics had it not been for the outcry and media attention that followed her death on January 31.

'Not even old enough to be married'

Monday, the doctors responsible for Hena's first autopsy faced prosecution for what a court called a "false post-mortem report to hide the real cause of Hena's death."

Public outrage sparked by that autopsy report prompted the high court to order the exhumation of Hena's body in February. A second autopsy performed at Dhaka Medical College Hospital revealed Hena had died of internal bleeding and her body bore the marks of severe injuries.

Police are now conducting an investigation and have arrested several people, including Mahbub Khan, in connection with Hena's death.

"I've nothing to demand but justice," said Darbesh Khan, leading a reporter to the place where his daughter was abducted the night she was raped.

He stood in silence and took a deep breath. She wasn't even old enough to be married, he said, testament to Hena's tenderness in a part of the world where many girls are married before adulthood. "She was so small."

Hena's mother, Aklima, stared vacantly as she spoke of her daughter's last hours. She could barely get out her words. "She was innocent," Aklima said, recalling Hena's last words.

Police were guarding Hena's family earlier this month. Darbesh and Aklima feared reprisal for having spoken out against the imam and the village elders.

They had meted out the most severe punishment for their youngest daughter. They could put nothing past them.

Three Women Caned in Malaysia for Adultery

From CNN World

3 women caned in Malaysia for adultery
By Joe Sterling, CNN
February 17, 2010 2:41 p.m. EST

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- For the first time, Malaysian authorities have caned three Muslim women under Islamic law for acts of adultery, the Malaysian national news agency Bernama said.

Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein announced the canings Wednesday, saying the penalty was carried out February 9 at a women's prison near Kuala Lumpur.

The canings -- a punishment that persists across Malaysian society since the British colonial era of the 19th century -- have been denounced by one Amnesty International official, who says "caning is tantamount to torture."

But Hishamuddin said the punishment was carried out "to educate and make the offenders realize their mistakes and to return to the right path."

"It is hoped that the issue will not be wrongly interpreted to the extent of tarnishing the sanctity of Islam," he was quoted as saying. He also said the punishment did not cause any injury and that the women were remorseful and repented, Bernama reported.

The women were struck with a rattan cane. One woman was released Sunday after spending a month in prison, another will be released in the next few days, and the third will be released in June.

Malaysia, which considers itself a moderate Muslim country, has a dual-track justice system, in which Islamic courts operate alongside civil ones. Muslims make up about 60 percent of the country's population of 28 million.

Last year, a woman was sentenced to caning under Islamic law for drinking alcohol in public -- beer at a hotel bar -- and that case caused an uproar in the country. Malaysia forbids alcohol consumption by Muslims, even those who are visiting the country.

The caning sentence of Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno has been postponed while the issue is under review, and she said that if she were to be caned, she wanted the flogging to occur in public.

"Let's be transparent about it," said Kartika, a mother and part-time model. An Islamic court also fined her $1,400 for the act. She has pleaded guilty and paid the fine.

Lance Lattig, a researcher on Malaysia for the human rights group Amnesty International, told CNN that the vast majority of canings are applied to illegal immigrants by civil courts, but the latest examples indicate that sharia courts happen to be picking up on the practice.

"It's not Muslims on the march," he said. "It's the tip of the iceberg of the bigger problem."

No matter who does it, he says, the group considers caning to be "cruel, inhumane and degrading."

***********************************************************

How were these women charged with the "crime" of adultery? Who accused them? How does anyone know that these women committed adultery? What is the evidence?  If the women confessed, were the men they committed the "crime" with also arrested, tried, convicted, tossed into jail and caned? If not, why not? It takes two to commit the "crime" of adultery. A double standard is NOT justice, no matter how religious authorities try to twist the words of the Koran. The same punishment has to apply to both parties to the crime, or the entire premise of this "crime" is false - a hypocritical means of keeping "uppity women" in line.

Saudi women had more rights at the time of the Romans than today

From Asianews.it
05/02/2008 12:30

This is shown by a book written by a female scholar and published in Great Britain. At that time, they are able to run businesses; while today, at a discussion of work for women in Riyadh, all of the women were in another room.

Riyadh (AsiaNews) - Arab women had more rights at the time of the Romans than they have today. At that time, in fact, their capacity to conduct their own economic affairs was recognised, which is not true in Saudi Arabia today. This is maintained by a female Saudi scholar, Hatoon al-Fassi, in a book entitled "Women In Pre-Islamic Arabia", published by British Archaeological Reports.

Barred from teaching at King Saud University in 2001, the scholar has examined the situation of Nabataea, a kingdom that at the beginning of the Christian era included parts of modern-day Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and had its capital in Petra. Here, Fassi maintains, women were able to conduct business, without even the form of "protection" required by Greek tradition in these matters.

In her opinion, it is precisely because of the lack of understanding on the part of Islamic scholars of the influences of Greco-Roman legislation on sharia that the limited rights and freedoms for women have arisen.

"We now live the worst status imaginable": this statement from Fawziya al-Oyouni, a women's rights activist, is reported in the review of the book on Middle East Online, which highlights how, when religious authorities, ministers, and businessmen met last month in Riyadh to discuss work for women, there were no women visible, because they were confined to another room, and the men were able only to hear them.